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Posted on 11/25/2017 1:14:45 AM PST by Swordmaker
Hackers are increasingly trying to take over phone numbers to target email and banking accounts. Here's how to stop them.
See the following video at the source site.
This short video and explainer is summarized from The Motherboard Guide to Not Getting Hacked, our comprehensive guide to digital security.
Your phone number is quickly becoming the key to your digital identity: your email, banking, and social media accounts are likely all linked to it. So hackers are increasingly trying to take over people’s numbers by directly hijacking their SIM cards. These kind of attacks, known as “SIM swapping” or “SIM hijacking,” allow hackers to take over your cellphone number, and in turn anything that’s connected to it.
The way these attacks work is hackers call up your cellphone provider and trick them into thinking they are you—a method known as “social engineering”—in order to get a new SIM card linked to your account.
These attacks can be prevented, or at least made much harder, by setting up a phone password. This is essentially a unique password or phrase that you are required to provide when you call your provider’s customers’ support. Most US carriers now offer this option. Motherboard confirmed that Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular all give customers this option. Verizon and U.S. Cellular have made this mandatory, according to their spokespeople. Call your provider and ask them to set this up for you.
This will make it extremely hard for the bad guys to steal your number.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
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Whoever it was then hung up.
I immediately called 611 on my iPhone and waited six or so minutes to talk to someone at AT&T. They informed me, as I suspected, they NEVER call using the customer's phone number, and will NEVER ask for any portion of the customer's SSN. They only call from an AT&T number which is obvious on an AT&T device. It was a scammer phishing for my SSN and other identifying information.
Also, my girlfriend has had THREE of her credit card accounts receive requests for NEW CARDS to be sent to addresses out of state in the past two weeks. This is the result of that 143 million customer hack of Equifax. In each case, the credit card companies called her to check with her AFTER sending out the new cards. This included department store cards! Why not check BEFORE letting the horses out of the barn? She's had to put a credit hold her accounts and now also on the titles of her several properties she owns. . . and has gotten a Lifelock membership. I've done the same because my data was compromised as well. Damn Equifax!
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bmp
I put a credit freeze on all three credit reporting agencies for my Mom.
How do you put a hold on a property title?
You can put a watch on the Title document requiring direct contact before any changes are made to the title, confirming it was approved by those on the title. It’s in the deluxe version of Lifelock. It looks for any pending changes on a specific address, etc., and notifies you as well. . . and sends a stop order if you didn’t authorize it.
Basically the same thing. . . Depends on which credit bureau you talk to. One calls it a freeze, another a hold. Same result.
I got a credit card in the mail that I didn’t sign up for and absolutely didn’t want. I called immediately and got it cancelled, signed up for one of the credit monitoring services immediately afterward (NOT Equifax, thank you very much).
Also, my girlfriend has had THREE of her credit card accounts receive requests for NEW CARDS to be sent to addresses out of state in the past two weeks. This is the result of that 143 million customer hack of Equifax.
They compromised half the country’s credit and what was the punishment for the massive screwup at Equifax? Virtually nothing. The idiot that was in charge of IT security at Equifax should be in jail.
For later. Thanks.
My hubby just had his eBay account spoofed and almost $700 charged to his credit card. Called eBay and they treated it like a it was a daily occurrence. Took us 6 hours to straighten it out between eBay, PayPal, credit card company and the merchants. No loss to us but only because we discovered it almost immediately. I believe eBay was hacked cuz that’s the only place the cc number was stored. Any news on eBay being hacked? Nope.
We’ll never use eBay again.
I have mostly written off Ebay.
It was really good once.
Yes it was good once. I could not believe how lightly eBay treated this issue. These were fraudulent transactions originating from their website and they just brushed it off. Now, PayPal and the cc company were very concerned and seemed truly appreciative that we reported this theft. The weird thing about it was the merchandise ordered was sent to our home address! Why would you steal someone’s cc number only to order stuff to be sent to the victims? Where’s the benefit to the thief?
Interesting.
Double Damn Equifax.
I read once that they may have hoped to steal it off your front porch between delivery time and your awareness that it had arrived. If you were home and alert, they were foiled.
I was home! Met the ups guy in the driveway!
That means the thief is a neighbor then.
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